Imagine a concert in a renovated arena with a new, state-of-the-art sound system and flashy multimedia displays on high-definition screens. Or a more expensive show using yesterday’s technology. Which would you pick?

Matt Kramer, president of the St. Paul Area Chamber of Commerce, worries that if the Legislature approves the Minnesota Vikings stadium bill as is, Xcel Energy Center will be left at a competitive disadvantage and such big acts as Lady Gaga and Bruce Springsteen will flock to an upgraded Target Center in Minneapolis.

That’s why at most every recent legislative hearing on the proposal to build a stadium in Minneapolis, St. Paul leaders can be seen trying to muscle their way into the debate.

“If you’re going to have a healthy region, then you have to be investing in all sides of the region,” St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman said, noting he was not anti-stadium and not against improving Target Center.

“I’m not arguing that shouldn’t be done. We’re twins. You can’t feed one twin and not the other and expect both to be healthy.”

Proposals at the Capitol have ranged from debt forgiveness for St. Paul’s RiverCentre convention hall to $27 million for a new St. Paul Saints baseball stadium to $1.3 million annually for the next 20 years for operating or capital costs of St. Paul sports facilities.

It is not clear which, if any, of the proposals will emerge from the 2012 Legislature. But St. Paul leaders say they will continue to push.

The state has, over the years, put $89 million toward the Minneapolis Convention Center and $750,000 annually for 20 years toward the Target Center, Coleman said.

“St. Paul has received nothing comparable to that,” he said.

In fact, the mayor said, when St. Paul asked for state help with paying for Xcel Center, “we got a loan.”

But the competition goes both ways, Sen. Ken Kelash, DFL-Minneapolis, suggested at a Senate committee hearing Tuesday, April 24, on the stadium bill.

After Coleman’s remarks about parity, Kelash reminded the mayor that St. Paul has benefited from not having the downtown sales tax burden Minneapolis has.

And “Target Center was doing just fine if you hadn’t built the Xcel Center,” he told Coleman.

On Thursday, Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak said there’s a different way to see the same numbers Coleman points to.

A study by RSM McGladrey tax consultants found that from 1961 to 2009, Minneapolis contributed 44 percent of the public investments that have supported the Twins, Timberwolves and the Vikings. St. Paul, in contrast, contributed 3 percent, Rybak said.

“There are different ways of looking at this. If this is an issue of St. Paul versus Minneapolis, we’re both going to lose,” Rybak said.

Stadium bills are on the verge of going to the floors of both the House and Senate. Each would allow construction of a $975 million, 65,000-seat stadium at the site of the current Metrodome.

The proposals call for $427 million from the Vikings, $398 million from the state using revenue from electronic pull-tabs and other gambling options, and $150 million from taxes in Minneapolis – extended several decades – that otherwise go toward that city’s convention center.

One aspect of the bills as proposed would allow Minneapolis to use some of the convention center tax stream to renovate the Target Center.

Kramer told a Senate Jobs Committee on Tuesday that the $100 million in renovations to the downtown Minneapolis arena would leave St. Paul struggling to land the kinds of concerts and shows that fill downtown restaurants and parking ramps on a Saturday night.

“Every single national act that comes into the Twin Cities tries to play the two arenas off each other,” Kramer said Thursday in an interview. “All of a sudden, the balance of where these acts want to be is going to shift over to Minneapolis. Are we going to get a Lady Gaga?”

Coleman sounded a similar alarm before the Jobs Committee on Tuesday and the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday.

St. Paul leaders have no doubt Target Center renovations will include a high-definition sound system and other improvements.

“It’s very frustrating,” Kramer said. “If they’re going to do this at the Target Center, at least put the Xcel on the same footing. We’re not asking for parity; we’re just asking for fairness.”

ALLIES AT CAPITOL

State lawmakers from the east metro have heard St. Paul’s pleas.

Last Friday, Sen. John Harrington, DFL-St. Paul, amended the Senate bill to remove language allowing Minneapolis to use sales tax money to renovate Target Center, arguing the equity issue with St. Paul needed to get resolved.

The Target Center piece was back in by the next Senate committee stop Tuesday, but so was a provision appropriating $1.3 million annually for 20 years to St. Paul for sports facilities operations or capital costs.

Coleman said that measure was a “beginning,” and Sen. James Metzen, DFL-South St. Paul, successfully pushed an amendment expanding the help to St. Paul to include forgiveness of $43 million in city debt for the RiverCentre.

At the same hearing, Sen. Ted Lillie, R-Lake Elmo, proposed adding Saints ballpark funding to the bill. He later withdrew the motion.

Metzen’s debt-forgiveness language was removed Wednesday during a Senate committee hearing. But bill sponsor Sen. Julie Rosen, R-Fairmont, reiterated her hope for a solution to equalizing things for St. Paul.

Sen. Richard Cohen, DFL-St. Paul, said such promises ring hollow.

“The inequities between Minneapolis and St. Paul have been significant,” Cohen said.

He asserted that state dollars for big-ticket capital items have been divvied up 95 percent for Minneapolis and 5 percent for St. Paul, and he said this likely would be the last opportunity for many in the Legislature to right the historical inequities.

Coleman said without more significant help for St. Paul the bill would be a “very direct threat” to the competitiveness of St. Paul’s facilities.

SAINTS AID?

Rosen, who authored the Senate bill, included $1.3 million per year that could go toward the Saints ballpark, Kramer noted. The money would come from the state’s general fund and be paid over 20 years. That adds up to $26 million, leaving the city $1 million short of its request. It also would force the city to borrow the $27 million up front and cover the interest alone.

“It’s a great first start, but one, it’s not sufficient,” Kramer said. “Instead of the state bonding for this, she’s providing the appropriation for the city to go out and bond.”

“Minneapolis is coming out of this thing pretty good. I’m for them. … But I do think there’s some parity that should tap in here that should include some money for the city of St. Paul,” said Metzen, who said he’s not done trying after his bill amendment was removed the next day.

Coleman’s “new comparison is to say the Twin Cities are more liked conjoined twins, where you can’t feed one and expect the other one to live,” Coleman’s spokesman Joe Campbell said. “You have to feed both of them. They have to be equal.”

Rybak said there is a way for both of the cities to get out from under debt for sports facilities together.

“For the year and a half I’ve been working on this, I’ve been saying to St. Paul, ‘We want to partner.’ But until these past couple of days, we haven’t had an idea on the table. Now we do. So let’s try to make something happen together.

“I’m going to make that happen by trying to pass this bill,” Rybak said.

Frederick Melo came to the Pioneer Press in 2005 and brings an aggressive East Coast attitude to St. Paul beat reporting. He spent nearly six years covering crime in the Dakota County courts before switching focus to the St. Paul mayor's office, city council, and all things neighborhood-related, from the city's churches to its parks and light rail. A resident of Hamline-Midway, he is married to a Frogtown woman. He Tweets manically at @FrederickMelo

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